Daulton Emma, Wicaksono Alfian N, Tiele Akira, Kocher Hemant M, Debernardi Silvana, Crnogorac-Jurcevic Tatjana, Covington James A
School of Engineering, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK.
Centre for Tumour Biology, Barts Cancer Institute, Queen Mary University of London, London, UK.
Talanta. 2021 Jan 1;221:121604. doi: 10.1016/j.talanta.2020.121604. Epub 2020 Sep 2.
Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is a particularly challenging cancer, with very low 5-year survival rates. This low survival rate is linked to late stage diagnosis, associated with the lack of approved biomarkers. One approach that is receiving considerable attention is the use of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that emanate from biological waste as biomarkers for disease. In this study, we used urine as our biological matrix and two VOC analysis platforms: gas chromatography - ion mobility spectrometry (GC-IMS) and GC time-of-flight mass spectrometry (GC-TOF-MS). We measured the urinary headspace of samples from patients with PDAC, chronic pancreatitis (CP) and healthy controls. In total, 123 samples were tested from these groups. Results indicate that both GC-IMS and GC-TOF-MS were able to discriminate PDAC from healthy controls with high confidence and an AUC (area under the curve) in excess of 0.85. However, both methods struggled to separate CP from PDAC, with the best result of AUC 0.58. This indicates that both conditions produce similar biomarkers in the urinary headspace. Chemical identification suggests that 2,6-dimethyl-octane, nonanal, 4-ethyl-1,2-dimethyl-benzene and 2-pentanone play an important role in separating these groups. Therefore, both techniques validate this approach in identifying subjects for further investigation in a clinical setting.
胰腺导管腺癌（PDAC）是一种极具挑战性的癌症，5年生存率极低。这种低生存率与晚期诊断有关，而晚期诊断又与缺乏经批准的生物标志物相关。一种备受关注的方法是利用生物废弃物释放出的挥发性有机化合物（VOCs）作为疾病的生物标志物。在本研究中，我们将尿液用作生物基质，并采用了两种VOC分析平台：气相色谱-离子迁移谱（GC-IMS）和气相色谱飞行时间质谱（GC-TOF-MS）。我们测量了PDAC患者、慢性胰腺炎（CP）患者及健康对照者样本的尿液顶空气体。这些组总共测试了123个样本。结果表明，GC-IMS和GC-TOF-MS都能够高度可靠地将PDAC与健康对照区分开来，曲线下面积（AUC）超过0.85。然而，两种方法都难以将CP与PDAC区分开，AUC的最佳结果为0.58。这表明这两种病症在尿液顶空气中产生相似的生物标志物。化学鉴定表明，2,6-二甲基辛烷、壬醛、4-乙基-1,2-二甲基苯和2-戊酮在区分这些组中起重要作用。因此，这两种技术都验证了这种方法在临床环境中识别有待进一步研究的受试者方面的有效性。
